The Kiss Thief(94)

Every time I thought about this fact, I wanted to crawl into a ball and die.

By the way Ms. Sterling winced, I knew that it didn’t look good for me. I escorted her back to her car. We hugged for long minutes.

“Always remember, Francesca—you’re worth more than the sums of your mistakes.”

As she drove away, I realized she was right. I didn’t need Wolfe to save me, or for Angelo to come to my rescue, or even for my mother to grow a backbone or my father to start acting like he had one.

The only person I needed was me.





THE NEXT FEW DAYS WERE pure, unadulterated torture.

The stuff we should bottle up, write down, and use on convicted child molesters.

Three days in, I caved and picked up the phone to call Arthur. Now he was playing hard to get. The tables had turned. The only person I wanted to speak to—my wife—was tucked in Arthur’s kingdom, and the place was gated and guarded more heavily than the Buckingham Palace.

I arrived at my wife’s parents’ house every single day, at six o’clock sharp, before boarding my flight, then again at eight o’clock at night, to try and talk to her.

I was always stopped at the gate by one of Rossi’s muscle, and they were beefier and stupider than his usual variety of Made Men, and showed no signs of stopping, even when my own bodyguards flexed their biceps.

Calling, or texting her was ball-less and inappropriate altogether. Especially since Sterling admitted to spilling the beans about all the things that happened between our families. Considering Francesca was under the impression that my original plan consisted of tossing her in a dark tower and killing her father slowly by stripping him and his wife of everything they owned, I knew I needed a little more than a fucking “Sorry” GIF. The conversation was too important not to be conducted face to face. There was much I needed to tell her. Much I’d found out in the days since she departed.

I was in love with her.

I was dreadfully in love with her.

Ruthlessly, tragically mad about the teenager with big blue eyes who talked to her vegetables.

I needed to tell her that I wanted this baby no less than she did. Not because I wanted children, but because I wanted everything she had to offer. And the things she didn’t offer—I wanted them, too. Not to own necessarily, but to simply admire.

The realization that I was in love didn’t happen in one glorious, Hallmark-worthy moment. It spread across the week we spent apart. With every failed attempt to reach out to her, I realized how important it was for me to see her.

Each time I got turned down, I looked up at the window of her room, willing her to materialize behind the white-laced curtain. She never did.

And that was why I avoided connections, in general. That whole climbing-the-walls thing? It wasn’t for me. But climbing, I did. Kicking things. Breaking things. Rehearsing words and speeches I would say. Avoiding suits who called and called, telling me that I needed to make a statement about my current family situation.

It was my issue. My life. My wife.

No one else mattered.

Not even my country.

A week into the delight called heartbreak, I decided to bend the rules and rush fate. She was going to hate me for it—but frankly, she had enough reason to want to spit in my face even before my next stunt.

On the seventh day of separation, I dragged Felix White in all his sweaty, shiny-faced glory to accompany me to Arthur’s house, carrying an urgent search warrant.

The thing missing? My fucking wife.

White had no real grounds to issue a warrant, other than he didn’t want me to dish out the dirt on him. Forever the double agent, he texted Arthur hours before, so the mobster actually dragged himself back home to be there when I came over.

Anyway, that was the story of how I came knocking on Francesca’s door with the chief of CPD, a warrant, and two cops.

And they said romance was dead.

When Rossi opened the door, his forehead was so creased, he looked like a bulldog. He slid his head between the cracked doors and tapered his eyes into slits.

“Senator, to what do I owe the pleasure?” He completely disregarded White, knowing damn well why the letter compromised him.

“Now’s not the time to play games.” I smiled coolly. “Unless you really want to lose. Let me in or send her out. Either way, I’m seeing her tonight.”

“I don’t think so. Not after you paraded that Russian whore in front of the entire city, leaving your pregnant wife at home.”

“I didn’t know.” Why I was explaining myself to him was beyond me. If he was the moral police, Michael Moore was a goddamn health guru.

“At any rate, I’ve been trying to reach her for seven days, and I have it on good authority that you want to open up before I do something you’ll regret.”

“You will never do it. Not with your pregnant wife in the picture.” Arthur had the audacity to flash me a taunting grin.

White coughed from beside me.

“Mr. Rossi, if you don’t let us in, I’ll have to arrest you. I have a court order to search your house.”

It was apparent that one person on the threshold believed I’d throw my father-in-law to the wolves.

Slowly, Arthur pushed the door open and allowed me to walk in. White remained behind me, shifting his weight from foot to foot like a teenager wondering how to ask a girl for a prom date. The man possessed the charisma of a can of soda.